Dear Reader,
This is a collection of some of my best pieces that I wrote during the first semester of my senior year at Penfield High School. I wrote these in my English elective, College Composition, with Ms Basko. These are all unfinished papers that have been reviewed by my peers and teachers and somewhat revised by myself over the semester.
College Composition, I didn't really know what to expect when I first started the class. I had heard rumors that we write our college essays and other things but it was nothing like what I expected. We learned many different types of papers; characterization, exemplification and narrative to name a few. Ms Basko forced me to expand my creativeness to a point that I had never been before. This was very good for me because I am not a naturally creative person so pushing me to be creative was something that I wasn't very happy about but in the long run it really paid off which I am glad about.
These pieces cover a variety of different writing styles and topics that we learned and studied. For most of our papers we would read an example of a writing style and we would break it down and find what we needed to do to write this paper in a similar way. After that we would do peer revisions to see where we could expand on ideas or continue thoughts more in depth.
The new conclusions I did for my 7 deadly sins paper were a way for us to practice writing new conclusions that really summarized and emphasized what I wanted the reader to understand. My picture paper was probably my favorite paper that I wrote this year. It is the most incomplete but I was able to write a story about whatever I wanted to and had the freedom to do what I wanted. The "how to" paper was also very fun to write because it was also very open-ended and it was the only group writing we did. We got to choose what we wanted to teach people, we chose "how to utilize your senior skip day". We chose this because we wanted to make sure that our classmates didn't mess up the most classic day of your high school experience. Next we needed to reflect on our 7 deadly sins paper, this was difficult for me because I couldn't find a topic that I liked and could write a good story for. I ended up doing soccer because I felt that I am very knowledgeable about the subject. Our next paper was one that we could really "take a bite out of", it was my food paper about chocolate chip cookies. We spent a whole class taste testing different brands of cookies and talking about them in groups. Then we had to write a paper about the different cookies that we ate and compare them. I talked about which ones I liked and which ones I disliked along with more details such as texture how moist they were and so on. After that we were challenged to write 3 new introductions to our food paper, we did this to practice grabbing the attention of the reader while still addressing the topic of our paper. This was one of the hardest things for me to do because most of my papers in the past were very bland and didn't have good intros, but I am very pleased with how these turned out.
In the beginning of this class I wasn't a very strong writer, I didn't feel comfortable writing, and I didn't enjoy it at all. I really struggled with my introductions and being creative with things such as titles and ways to catch the readers attention. I also wasn't able to expand my ideas and make the story "flow" together.
After the semester was over I felt like I was able to write more creatively and thoroughly than I could at the beginning. I also think that I was able to complete my thoughts and tell the reader what I wanted to in a way that was interesting and attention grabbing.
I wish that I could have had more time to work on some of these pieces because I felt I had good ideas but wasn't able to finish. I would have rather done 2-3 very well written papers this semester than the 10-12 drafts we did.
Overall this class was very good for me as a writer because it forced me to go out of my comfort zone with my writing and expand my views on writing papers. This was very beneficial to me and was a good step towards getting me ready for college next year.
I hope you enjoy
Eric DeHond
